Following is an account of my zany journey with several friends to two X-Files Expos.  Unfortunately, the powers-that-be did not allow cameras inside the Expo, so this account will be photographically lacking.  But entertaining nonetheless!

The first trip was to the Expo in Altanta.  Katherine, Cassandra and I drove from Gainesville, Florida, to Jacksonville, where we caught a plane to Atlanta.  We were planning on meeting Misty there - she would drive from her home in Jacksonville and arrive at the hotel around 3 AM on Saturday.  (We weren’t sure how we’d handle this, since there were only 2 beds and a roll-out couch in the room, but we figured the hotel would have roll-away beds.  And besides, at 3 AM we really wouldn’t care.)  Then Katherine’s husband, Drew, would meet us Saturday morning, and we would all travel as a group to the Expo.  That’s how it was supposed to happen.  This is what actually happened…

Friday, March 27, 1 PM
The three of us set off for the Expo in Atlanta.  We decided to fly from Jacksonville, mainly because I didn’t want to be stuck in a car for 6-8 hours.  I’m not entirely certain why I felt this way, considering my fear of flying.  Anyway, we made it to Jacksonville without incident (other than getting a little lost on the way).

3:30 PM
We were about an hour and a half early, so we wandered around the airport before making our way to the gate.  This went without incident as well, except when Cassandra set off the walk-through alarm.  We managed to convince the security personnel that it was just the implant from when she was kidnapped by aliens, so they let us through.

5:00 PM
 We boarded the plane and began to settle in when a gentleman approached us and informed us that Katherine was sitting in his seat.  Needless to say, this did not go over well with Katherine.  But she didn’t have to kill him - the stewardess did some checking and found out that the ticket agent had issued this gentleman a duplicate of Katherine’s ticket (it even had her name on it).  The gentleman was escorted to another seat, and we prepared for take-off.  I would like to say that take-off went smoothly, and it did - except for when pieces of the plane began to fall off and almost hit Katherine in the head (actually, it was just one piece of molding from the overhead luggage compartment, but it did nothing to ease my nerves).

6:30 PM
 We managed to make it to Atlanta in one piece, and set off in search of a ride to the hotel.  We walked out into the bus area when a rather large and impatient gentleman began herding us into his van - before he even knew where we were going.  When we told him we were going to the AmeriSuites hotel, he replied, "Oh, yes, we go there."  We couldn’t find it on his sign, but he assured us that they went there.  He then herded us into the van, not once even asking how we were going to pay.  He and the other two gentleman were in quite a hurry, so we weren’t able to ask any questions before they bustled off again in search of who knows what.  We then began to wonder about silly little things, such as why he hurried us into the van without even knowing where we were going, why the van had torn, discolored seats, why there were three drivers for one van, and where the heck they had run off to.  Once they were all out of site, we scuttled out of the van and grabbed our luggage out of the back (which the driver had wisely left wide open for anyone to come along and steal our stuff), and started to make our way back into the airport.  We didn’t make it all the way before the men rushed up to us and informed us that we needed to get back into the van because we were leaving soon. We explained that we had forgotten some luggage and were going back to retrieve it.  One of the men apparently decided we needed help with this task, and began to follow us into the airport.  We informed him that we were perfectly capable of handling this ourselves, thank you very much, and he left us alone.  This experience convinced us to call the hotel and ask them to recommend a bus service.  This seems simple, but on this trip, nothing was as it seemed.  I tried several times to call the hotel from a pay-phone, but to no avail.  So we made our way to the airport police station, where a very helpful woman called the hotel for us.  The hotel clerk I spoke to said she would page a driver named Samuel, who would drive to the airport and overhead page us once he arrived.

8:30 PM
As you may have already guessed, Samuel never materialized.  So we once again braved the bus area and found a reputable - looking transport to take us to the hotel.  I called the hotel back and asked them to tell Samuel (wherever he was) to forget it, and we got into another van.  This company seemed on-the-level.  We were asked where we were going, how we were going to pay, etc.  We were then introduced to Phillip, a nice enough seeming young man, who would be our driver.  Phillip informed us that the drive to the hotel would take about an hour, which struck me as odd because Phillip was driving at around Warp 10.  But all was not well - after driving for about 10 minutes, it became clear that we had not yet left the airport.  Soon Phillip announced that he was going to make his boss apologize to us for making him return to the bus area to pick up another passenger.  Of course, this passenger’s hotel was not in the same direction as ours, so now our trip would take even longer.
 

9:00 PM
We still managed to make it to the hotel in about an hour, since Phillip had the foresight to increase speed to Warp 12.  We tipped him $10 for not driving us off a cliff, and entered the hotel.

11:00 PM
We settled in and began to relax, even ordered take-out pizza, when we received a call from the front desk - Misty had arrived early.  This is when the trouble began.  The hotel staff informed us that there were no roll-away beds available, so we embarked on a 20-minute tirade with the front desk about the terrible service.  By the end of it, Misty was so frustrated that she decided to just go to another hotel and meet us the next day.  So we just ate our dinner (which was pretty good, except that Katherine’s angel-hair pasta with nothing on it but parmesan cheese cost something like $11), and took to our beds.  We wanted to get a good night’s sleep - we were planning on leaving the hotel at 9:00, because we figured there would be a long line to get into the Expo (it started at 11:00).  Since the International Ballroom (where the Expo was being held) was only 6 miles away, we thought that would give us plenty of time.

Saturday, March 28, 7:30 AM
We all staggered out of bed and managed to get dressed, then made our way downstairs to partake of the continental breakfast.  It was actually pretty good - they even had french toast and pancakes.  Then we got into the elevator, which had previously been occupied by a herd of wildebeests with severe gastro-intestinal problems, to go back to our room.  I then went back down to the lobby to get directions to the International Ballroom.  I shared the elevator ride back to the 4th floor with a large group of Hispanic men who were there for a wedding, and I noticed that one of the men looked exactly like Drew (who, incidentally, is not Hispanic).  I didn’t think much of it until the man followed me off the elevator and asked me if "we were ready to go."  At this point I realized that it WAS Drew, and I was quite embarrassed.  He didn’t mind - he explained that he just blends into the background.  We went back into the room after Katherine informed Cassandra not to come out of the bathroom naked (not that she would have anyway) because there was a guy in the room.  I packed my camera, zoom lens, flash, and 3 rolls of film - I was ready, at least photographically speaking.  Shortly thereafter, Misty arrived, and we were on our way.  The main event!

9:30 AM
Ok, so we weren’t quite on our way yet.  Katherine’s shoes were hurting her feet, so we stopped at Target on the way.  Katherine tried on sneakers while the rest of us tried on some of the more ridiculous selections of footwear and made fun of the teenagers nearby who were actually considering buying the hideous things.  Misty was ecstatic with her purchase of an Eeyore, and I found a nice pair of yuppie - looking shoes for only $7.  Now we’re on our way!

10:30 AM
Ok, so we had a little trouble finding the International Ballroom.  But after making 3 U-turns and stopping twice to ask for directions, we managed to find it.  Actually, we managed to find the dirt parking lot.  But we followed the rest of the herd down the road, and soon we saw - my God, can that be the line?  Yep, it was.  We stood in line in the Georgia heat in our black X-Files shirts , and soon we were approached by a woman who informed us that they wouldn’t let us in with cameras.  So we sent the token male back to the car with the cameras (you have to feel sorry for a single male surrounded by four squealing women…nah).

11:00 AM
This is it!  The herd moved toward to entrance, where we could hear faint strains of the X-Files theme.  We then entered a smoky hallway with filing cabinets on either side.  The cabinet drawers had dates on them, starting at around 1940 and ending in the late 1960’s.  These drawers supposedly held the tissue samples of each person inoculated with the smallpox vaccine - tissue samples which have been used to catalog us to assist in the alien colonization of Earth.  Then we entered the main area - VERY cool.  It was made to look like a top-secret government facility - the whole place was moodily lit with pools of different colored light.  But I wasn’t there to savor the mood - I was there to shop!  Which I was able to easily do.  Within 10 minutes I had already spent around $250 - 7 t-shirts, a keychain, two posters, the X-Files Interactive CD ROM, several pictures, I forget what else.  We walked over to the stage area and listened to Steven Williams (Mr. X) for a while, then got our pictures taken in Mulder’s office.  We bought the pictures which would be autographed by the stars, then discovered another group of vendors upstairs.  These vendors were selling mainly alien - related paraphernalia.  I bought another two t-shirts (these were Area 51 t-shirts), 10 preserved aliens in bottles, a preserved alien keychain, a $40 limited-edition X-Files lithograph… well, you get the idea.

2:00 PM
Cassandra, Misty and Katherine went to stand in line to get Steven Williams’ autograph while Drew and I tried to find a place to sit.  We ended up standing for a while until a few people left, then all five of us squeezed into a space large enough for two people.  But it was worth it, because…

2:45 PM
Nicholas Lea, aka Alex Krycek, took the stage.  Once the female contingent of the audience stopped screaming, he answered questions and talked about the show.  He talked about the scene in Patient X when he kissed Mulder on the cheek, and said that they had quite a time getting through it.  He said that everyone on the set, especially he and David Duchovny, were giggling so much that they had to do the scene 15 times before they got it right.  During the auction later on (which was held to raise money for the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation), they auctioned off the chair Nick was sitting on for $500.

3:30 PM
Possibly the highlight of the Expo - Dean Haglund (Ringo Langly, one of the Lone Gunmen), took the stage.  He started out by answering what he said are the most common questions he gets - Yes, the Long Gunmen are in the movie, and Yes, this is his real hair.  Then he did a stand-up comedy routine which I have never seen the likes of before or since.  The man is a stone riot!  He basically ad-libbed an X-Files episode with input from the audience.  During the first part of his performance, he asked audience members to yell out their favorite animal.  From this he decided that the villain of the episode would be a "kangaroo-bear-dog".  He then asked a guy from the audience to come up on stage and provide sound effects for his narration of part of the episode.  For the second part of his routine, Dean asked a woman from the audience to come up and provide his arms for him - that is, he put on a jacket with holes in the back near the shoulders, and the woman stood behind him and stuck her arms through the holes.  He then pretended to be a scientist giving a press conference about the kangaroo-bear-dog, and the woman behind him had to provide the gestures.  It was very entertaining, especially when someone from the audience yelled out that Dean’s zipper was down.  Then Dean and producer Paul Rabwin acted out another scene, in which Dean played Langly (as he jokingly put it, a "big stretch" from himself), and Rabwin played Mulder.  Dean started the dialogue with a sentence that started with the letter "A", and Rabwin had to follow with a sentence that started with "B", and so on.  They only messed up once.  Then Dean got another poor soul from the audience to come up and provide his movements for him.  He was supposed to be paralyzed from the waist down, and she had to actually move his body around.  When he was supposed to chase the kangaroo-bear-dog, for instance, she had to physically pick up his legs and make him walk.  I think she was deathly embarrassed.  By the end of Dean’s routine, my face hurt from laughing so hard.

4:15 PM
Mitch Pileggi (Assistant Director Skinner) went on stage.  We decided to watch from the autograph line, and it’s a good thing we did - the line ended up going all the way to the other side of the building.  Mitch kindly obliged the audience by taking off his cap so we could see that sexy bald head, and he gave us all the thrill of hearing him recite his famous quip to Cancer Man from Paper Clip - "This is where you pucker up and kiss my ass".

5:00 PM
It was finally time for the autographs.  The line moved pretty quickly, and I began to grow more and more nervous.  Soon I was standing right in front of Nick Lea!  Katherine, who was right behind me, told him that I’d been talking about this event for months.  I guess Nick decided that this warranted something special, so he reached out and SHOOK MY HAND!  I’m still recovering from that.  Then I moved on to Mitch Pileggi, who was very sweet.  He asked me how I was and if I was having a good time, and he seemed very sincere.  Then I handed him over to Katherine and Misty, who bowed down in front of him and exclaimed, "We’re not worthy!  We’re not worthy!"  He seemed to think that was pretty cute.  When they moved on to Dean Haglund, he said, "I’m not worthy!  I’m not worthy!"
At this point, Mitch Pileggi was signing Cassandra’s picture.  When she told him that we came all the way from Gainesville, he touched her arm and said, "Well, bless your heart."  By this time I had gotten Dean Haglund’s autograph and had moved out of the line, but I had the foresight to ask Drew to get Nick Lea to sign another picture for me - I sent this one to our very own Nicci, who has helped me learn about all the X-Files lore.

We were pretty tired by this point, so we just played a little trivia game and watched the trailer for Fight the Future before leaving at about 7pm.  We were planning to stop and get something to eat on the way back to the hotel, but..

8:30 PM
Well, we were still driving around looking for someplace to eat that everybody could agree on.  We didn’t want to stop at some fast-food place.  We wanted real food after such a long day.  So we drove around Atlanta, Katherine, Drew and myself in one car, with Misty and Cassandra trying to follow us.  We stopped at an auto shop and they seemed to think there was an Olive Garden around here somewhere, so we set off again…

9:30 PM
Drew stops at a stop light, at which point Misty comes running up to our car and says, "F*** real food.  I saw a restaurant back there - I’m going, you can follow me if you want.  I really don’t care."  So we ended up eating at the Foghorn Grille, and it turned out to be pretty good.

The rest of the trip was pretty uneventful.  Cassandra and I spent the night at the same hotel, Katherine and Drew left for Columbus to stay with Drew’s dad, and Misty spent the night at the Marriott.  The next day, Misty drove Cassandra and me to the airport, and then she drove back to Jacksonville.   While Cassandra and I were on the plane back to Gainesville, we began discussing the idea of going to the next Expo, which was in Miami.  By the time the plane landed (no pieces fell off it this time!), we’d pretty much made up our minds to go to Miami.  We made it back to Gainesville without any trouble (except that I missed our turn and got a little lost - again), and began planning for the next trip!